Surveillance video footage shows a man approaching the Islamic Center shortly before midnight Sunday, then a flash and flames, damaging the house of worship where Omar Mateen, who attacked an Orlando, Florida, nightclub in June, often prayed.
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One of the mosque’s attendees told CNN that the Fort Pierce Islamic Center was “like any other mosque”.
Surveillance video shows an individual walking up to the east side of the building before a flash and the start of a fire, Major David Thompson of the sheriff’s office, said at a press conference this morning.
The mosque attended by Omar Mateen, the Orlando nightclub shooter, was intentionally set on fire Monday in an arson attack, according to law enforcement authorities.
Wilfredo Amr Ruiz of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said: “First there were threating voicemails”.
Mateen was among the members of the Fort Pierce Islamic Center.
Investigators speak outside the Fort Pierce Islamic Center Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, after a fire burned the center earlier that morning.
Thompson was asked about any coincident between the blaze and the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
For this to happen to us on the morning of our biggest celebration of the year has made everyone saddened and scared, but our community is bigger than a building.
The 29-year-old United States citizen of Afghan origin opened fire at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando on June 12, killing 49 people and injuring 53 more. The suspect got off the bike and approached the mosque carrying a bottle of liquid and papers, moments before the blaze erupted, he said.
Mateen committed the worst mass shooting in modern American history in June killing 49 people when he opened fire in Pulse nightclub.
The attack occurred on one of the holiest Muslim holidays.
During his conversations with police negotiators before refusing to surrender and being killed, Mateen – a USA citizen of Afghan origin – identified himself as an “Islamic soldier” and swore loyalty to the Islamic State jihadist group.
Michael Parsons, 22, was standing outside his parents home, directly across the street from the mosque. He noted that since the Orlando shooting, “a lot of people have been driving by hollering and yelling expletives at the church or mosque or whatever they call it”.
“I would not want to speculate, but certainly that is in the back of our minds”, he said.
On July 2, a few weeks after the nightclub massacre, a man was beaten outside the mosque.
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“The man was stopped by deputies and arrested a short time later”.
